Time for a round of 'It could only happen in Stockton'

Frankenmuffin Productions is inviting people to tell their stories of the Calaveras River for a documentary film. Here's one they probably can't use.

Michael Fitzgerald

Frankenmuffin Productions is inviting people to tell their stories of the Calaveras River for a documentary film. Here's one they probably can't use.

Dirk Hamilton, a first-rate singer/songwriter, lived here in the 1980s. His Calaveras story happened on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 4, 1988.

"I was walking right by Pershing and UOP on the other (north) side of the Calaveras," recalled Hamilton, who now lives outside Dallas.

The river by University of the Pacific had dwindled to its deepest channel. In it, "I saw what looked like human form," Hamilton said, "like a mummy, just wrapped up in some kind of tape that was gray-colored."

Curious, Hamilton stumbled down the bank. UOP had just celebrated homecoming. "I thought it was probably off a float or something."

Up close, Hamilton could see the form was floating face down, wrapped in tape or bandage grayed by the dirty river.

Its hands were tied behind its back with thin rope or wire. The feet were bound together.

Hamilton found a long stick and poked it.

"The body had weight and substance to it. I poked it again. ... And I realized, 'This body is a person. A dead person.' "

This was before cellphones enabled dialing 911 on the spot. Hamilton walked on to a Pacific Avenue breakfast place. He told the owner he had found a dead body, ordered breakfast - and forgot about the corpse.

This seems way, way out of the norm.

"It surprises me, too," said Hamilton, with hindsight.

Anyway, the next morning's headlines said two fishermen had discovered the body.

Hamilton's reaction was another variation from the norm.

"Immediately I felt offended and incensed and jealous," he recalled. "It was my dead body. It was my dead body. I found it before those fishermen."

The corpse was soon identified as a missing Reno man. Reno police arrested three men for his murder.

One confessed they had driven the body over the mountains and dumped it into the Delta.

There was nothing funny about the crime. But Hamilton thought his own indignantly possessive response deserved a send-up. He wrote a song, recorded on his album "SEXspringEVERYTHING."

It's called "My Dead Body." Available at dirkhamilton.com.

If you have a (more conventional) story about the Calaveras River, call the filmmakers at (209) 631-6315 or (209) 327-9039, or email cspatola@frankenmuffin.org or bjacinto@frankenmuffin.org.